An overgrown parking lot clings to the fringe of an urban center. Rundown school buildings wait for a sorely needed upgrade. Somewhere outside of these places, sleekly dressed design students stay up late with their rulers and tricked out software in hand. How about combining the two?

However, it is important to ensure that these community projects hit their target. Design projects run the gamut, but successful ones require an honest and established relationship between students and community partners.

According to the Project for Public Space, there are 11 principles for creating great community spaces. Some of these principles are especially important for design school projects, including:

The community is the expert;

You’re creating a place, not a design;

You are never finished.

All too often, student partnerships can fail to meet these criteria. The RISD garden project in Pawtucket is undoubtedly beautiful. However, for a passerby at the garden, very few elderly residents seem to actively participate — perhaps because not enough time was allocated to show the residents how to best use the project design.

Collaboration is inherently seductive. Offering design students real-world experience to tackle community problems can be a great thing. But it’s important to fully consider the long-term effects of a design. Going forward, how should we ensure that art school projects better reflect the robust context of a community?

Lillian Mathews graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Environmental Studies (Honors) and a focus on Food Systems and Urban Sustainability. She has designed and implemented an arts-based gardening site at a neighborhood center in Providence, Rhode Island, and has completed work in ecological planning and design, sustainable agriculture, and urban planning. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more at www.makebreadbreakbread.wordpress.com.